This year I've decided to sketch many of The Great Holy Men and Women of the Church. Come along with me on this journey as we get to know our elder brothers and sisters in faith.

"And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us," Heb 12:1

Edward the Confessor

October 14

Edward the Confessor [Latin: Edvardvs Confessor Rex Anglorvm](between 1003 and 1005-4 or 5 January 1066) was the last Anglo-Saxon Kings of England, preceding the victory of the Normans at the battle of Hastings. Edward has traditionally been seen as unworldly and pious, and his reign is notable for the disintegration of royal power in England and the advance of power of the Godwin family. Edward is called confessor, the name for someone believed to have lived a saintly life but who was not a martyr. He was privately devoted to asceticism, frequently abstaining from all food with the exception of bread, water and Holy Eucharist. Publicly he built many great Cathedrals, most notably in Salisbury and Kent, as well as his enthusiastic support for English monasticism. He is best remembered for building the Royal Abbey at Westminster, the setting for nearly every anointing and coronation of a British monarch for the last millennium. He is one of the patrons of England, and a universal symbol of British piety.